United Way Re-Opens SparkPoint Oakland Financial Help Center for Low-Income Residents

OAKLAND,
CA, USA (January 31, 2013) -- The
United
Way of the Bay Area will hold an Open House and
Ribbon-Cutting today, Thursday, January 31, from 3:00 to 5:30 p.m.,
to celebrate the new downtown Oakland location for SparkPoint,
the financial education center that offers a wide range of services
to help people achieve financial stability. Scheduled to be on hand
for the ribbon cutting are Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Oakland Mayor
Jean Quan, and Councilperson Desley Brooks.

The
SparkPoint program now has 10 Bay Area locations, as well as three
locations in Fresno and Orange County. Today's ribbon-cutting on the
Oakland SparkPoint center at Eastmont Town Center is partly a
celebration of the first SparkPoint Center that opened in Oakland in
March 2009. With the relocation to the Eastmont Town Center,
SparkPoint now has a larger facility in a permanent home ready to
assist East Bay residents.

The
SparkPoint Centers have offered a model for community outreach to
assist families in achieving financial sustainability. SparkPoint
brings together non-profit and government partners to help its
clients increase their income, build assets, and manage their debt.
Clients are assigned a financial coach who works with them for two to
three years to help them achieve financial stability.

Since
it was founded, more than 8,000 individuals have received assistance
from SparkPoint Oakland. The typical SparkPoint client is female,
head of household, earning $30,000 or less. With the aid of
SparkPoint services, the average client is able to raise his or her
credit score by 80 points, increase savings $215, reduce debt by
$1,710, and increase annual income by $9,132.

"Finding
a permanent home for SparkPoint Oakland has always been our goal, and
with the move to Eastmont Town Center, we now have a central location
that will make our services more accessible to better serve the
community," said Lorne Needle, Chief Community Investment
Officer for United Way of the Bay Area. "Seventeen and one-half
percent of Oakland residents currently live below the poverty line.
With support from services such as SparkPoint, we hope to be able to
help low-income residents achieve financial stability. Already our
clients tell us they love the new location, and we are seeing more
new clients than ever."

The
SparkPoint initiative is part of the United Way's response to address
the systemic issues that keep families in poverty. The United Way's
goal is to reduce poverty in the Bay Area by 50 percent by the year
2020. To achieve that goal, the initiative has targeted four at-risk
groups: female-headed households, families with young children,
linguistically isolated individuals, and those with a high school
diploma or less.

Major
funding for the SparkPoint Oakland and for other SparkPoint programs
in the Bay Area comes from generous donations by Chevron and Wells
Fargo.

About
SparkPoint Centers

Created
by United Way of the Bay Area, SparkPoint Centers are one-stop,
financial education centers that help individuals and families who
are struggling to make ends meet. SparkPoint helps clients address
immediate financial crises, get back on their feet, and build
financially secure futures. Each center brings together a full range
of services at one convenient location, including job training,
career development, and financial coaching, as well as access to
higher education and savings accounts. Every SparkPoint client is
provided a coach who helps create a step-by-step plan to set and
achieve financial goals. United Way's SparkPoint model has garnered
both national and international attention with poverty experts
traveling from around the country and as far away as the Netherlands
to study it. Learn more at http://www.sparkpointcenters.org.

About
United Way of the Bay Area

United
Way of the Bay Area is a nonprofit organization, leading a movement
to cut Bay Area poverty in half by 2020. We're harnessing the
collective power of nonprofits, government, corporations, labor and
thousands of individuals to create change through giving, advocating,
and volunteering. Every year, our programs - SparkPoint, Earn It!
Keep It! Save It!, 211, MatchBridge and Community Schools - help more
than 250,000 Bay Area residents. We connect people to food and
shelter, put people back to work, bring tax dollars back to our
community, help youth succeed in school and in the workplace, and
move people toward financial stability. Founded in 1922, United Way
of the Bay Area serves Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San
Francisco, San Mateo and Solano Counties. For more information, visit
http://www.uwba.org.